This is a record of my journey as a Muslim. I used to be Catholic and belonged to a missionary organisation. After my conversion, I sat on the board of a Muslim converts' organisation and specialised in da'wah programmes, convert management, interfaith issues and apostasy cases. I am an initiate of a Sufi order. As such, the articles and writings tend to cover these areas.
All the Arabic and graphics could not have been done without the help of my wife, Zafirah.

Monday, 11 August 2014

An Ascetic Prays the Funeral Prayer for a Sinner

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

The following is an extract from “On the
Sayings of the Gnostics at Funerals & Cemeteries, & the Legal Verdict Concerning
the Visitation of Graves’ from The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife” of
Imam al-Ghazali (r.a.), and translated by Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad.

It is related that a certain man deeply sunk in
depravity once passed away in a district in Basra. His wife was unable to find anyone to help
her carry him, since not one of her neighbours paid him any heed on account of
his great wickedness. So she hired some
carriers, who bore him out to the prayer-place, where there was no one to pray
for him. Now, on a mountain close by,
there was one of the great ascetics, and he came and prayed for the deceased.

The news that the ascetic had done this spread
throughout the city, and the people were greatly astounded that he should have
thus prayed for him, but he told them, “I was Instructed in a dream to descend
to such-and-such a place, where I would see a man’s funeral attended only by a
woman, and there to offer prayers for him, for he had been Forgiven his sins.”

The people’s astonishment increased at this,
until the ascetic summoned the woman and questioned her about the circumstances
and behaviour of the dead man. “As
people know,” she said, “his entire day was spent in the tavern where he occupied
himself with drinking wine.”

“See now,” the ascetic said, “do you know any
good deeds which were to his credit?”

“Yes,” she replied, “three things. Every day at dawn he used to awaken from his drunkenness,
change his clothes, perform the ablution, and offer the dawn prayer with the
congregation. Then he would return to
the tavern and occupy himself with vice. The second thing is that his house was never
devoid of one or two orphans, to whom he showed even more kindness than he did
to his own children, and for whom he was greatly solicitous. The third thing is that in the darkness of the
night and in the very midst of his drunkenness, he would awaken, weep, and say,
‘O Lord! Which corner of Hell do You Wish
to fill with this foul man?’ – by which he meant himself.”

And so the ascetic went his way, the obscurity
surrounding the affair having been cleared.